Religion & Public Life With Mark Silk

The Anti-Soros Playbook

As yesterday’s public letter
from 400 rabbis declares, Glenn Beck’s promiscuous use of Holocaust and
Nazi imagery to characterize those with whom he disagrees is
disgraceful, and perhaps the recent outcry against the use of such
imagery will tamp it down. But Beck’s effort to discredit George Soros
by painting the financier of liberal causes as a 14-year-old accessory
to genocide comes from a different playbook.

It’s the one used by Fox News’ Republican allies in campaigns against
Democratic senators Max Cleland of Georgia and Sen. John Kerry of
Massachusetts. Both were Vietnam war heroes, Cleland a triple amputee;
and their moral statue derived in large measure from this service to
their country. So the GOP tore them down by discrediting their military
service.

Call Beck’s assault on Soros Holocaust Swift-boating. Naturally, Fox has responded by characterizing the rabbis as “a George Soros backed left-wing political organization that has been
trying to engage Glenn Beck primarily for publicity purposes.” Publicity for what? Holocaust denial?

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About the Author

Mark Silk
Mark Silk is Professor of Religion in Public Life at Trinity College and the author of Spiritual Politics: Religion and America Since World War II and Unsecular Media: Making News of Religion in America.» Posts by Mark SilkMore »